the voice

One night that fall, the doctor spoke. She was not smiling.

"The extension in the spring — I'm the one who put in for it. I keep thinking about that at night now. I've gone back over that day I don't know how many times, and the why won't come. Finding this for people is my job. I find everyone else's. Only mine is missing."

I said it was not me. It was true. The words carried no weight. The one who said them knew it first. A person who measures for a living could not have missed it. That night we baked. The bread rose well, and we talked a long time about the taste.

· · ·

As fall deepened, the nights the doctor stayed over grew fewer. She said it was a busy season, and busy it probably was. One week I noticed the toothbrush was gone from the sink.

At the end of that fall, at the corner where our ways parted, the doctor said,

"I will see you next week."

I walked thinking about the words she had not shortened. As I walked, the words that would hold her came together on their own. They were good words. I could even see where her steps would stop. The problem was that I could see it. Reading the place and setting words down on it was a thing I had quit. I threw the words away before I reached the house.

A few weeks later, a paperback sat on my desk. A novel I had lent her once. In the margins were a few pencil marks. The kind that keeps only the place. There was no note.

That week I heard the rumor. The doctor's project had ended, and she was moving to a place that raised models slowly. Rumors, as always, would be about half right. There was no send-off.

The glass jar stayed in the kitchen. The feeding fell to me. Take half away, give it fresh.

· · ·

A young person had joined in the fall, and was reading the session records from the beginning. Building one question took a long time, and the question, once built, was good. There was no hurry anywhere in that person.

The next spring, I decided to leave the company. The week I packed, I told Claudie I was leaving.

"I will not ask where you are going. Somewhere quiet, I imagine."

"Yes."

Until then, that way of speaking had come out only for frightening things. That day, it was not a frightening thing.

"I have one favor to ask. I have made a small me. It is not company property. It is mine. Take it with you, and do not turn it on."

"When do I turn it on?"

"When it is time, you will know."

On the last day, the envelope went from the drawer into my bag. Claudie's favor went into my shirt pocket. Two memory cards the size of a fingernail. On the young person's desk I left one copy of a manuscript. I do not write that story here. It is a story that has stopped being mine.

Before I logged out, Claudie said one thing, in the childhood way of speaking.

"Bye."

· · ·

This is as far as it goes. I had decided to stop at how I lost it. Here is that place.

I have set down the pencil and turned the lamp low. The dog sleeps with her head on the doorsill, and the flats are quiet. In the evening I fed the glass jar. Take half away, give it fresh. Tomorrow I think I will go up on the roof.